DIOMEDES, son of Tydeus and Deiphyle, was king of Ætolia, and one of the bravest of the Grecian chiefs in the Trojan war. He often engaged Hector and Æneas, and obtained much military glory. He went with Ulysses to steal the Palladium from the temple of Minerva in Troy; and assisted in murdering Rheius king of Thrace, and carrying away his horses. At his return from the siege of Troy, he lost his way in the darkness of night, and landed in Attica, where his companions plundered the country and lost the Trojan Palladium. During his long absence, his wife Ægiale
forgot her marriage vows, and prostituted herself to Cometes one of her servants. This lasciviousness of the queen was attributed by some to the resentment of Venus, whom Diomedes had severely wounded in a battle before Troy. The infidelity of Ægiale was highly displeasing to Diomedes. He resolved to abandon his native country which was the seat of his disgrace; and the attempts of his wife to take away his life, according to some accounts, did not a little contribute to hasten his departure. He came to that part of Italy which has been called Magna Gracia, where he built a city, which he called Ægrippe, and married the daughter of Daunus the king of the country. He died there in extreme old age; or, according to a certain tradition, he perished by the hand of his father-in-law. His death was greatly lamented by his companions, who in the excess of their grief were changed into birds resembling swans. These birds took flight into a neighbouring island in the Adriatic, and became remarkable for the tameness with which they approached the Greeks, and for the horror with which they shunned all other nations. They are called the birds of Diomedes. Altars were raised to Diomedes, as to a god, one of which Strabo mentions at Timavus.